NEW HAVEN >> The iconic play “Our Town,” as anyone who knows anything about the play that has become standard fare for all high school drama clubs, was written by New Haven’s own Thornton Wilder.

The tale of Grover’s Corners and Emily and George Gibbs has had many interpretations on the professional stage as well as television. Think Hal Holbrook or Paul Newman as the Stage Manager.

New Haven Theater Company’s production has a certain New Haven veneer to it, both in casting and location. It’s in its final week of performances Thursday-Saturday at 8 p.m. in a performance space at The English Building Markets, 839 Chapel St., where it opened this past Thursday with a female, Megan Chenot, in the role of the Stage Manager.

“Our Town is one of the iconic plays of the American canon, a beautiful work about memory and time,” said director Steve Scarpa, who’s also a NHTC actor, and handles press and communications at Long Wharf Theatre for his day job. “It has been a fascinating journey working on this piece with the New Haven Theater Company community ... ”

Wilder, who won three Pulitzer Prizes, including for “Our Town,” went to Yale and moved into his house up on the hill on Deepwood Drive in Hamden right after winning that “Our Town” Pulitzer. He hung at The Anchor, he entertained at the house, and when he died, he was buried in Mount Carmel Cemetery.

“I opened the box, and there was the handwritten original of ‘Our Town’ with the first words ‘No curtain, no scenery.’ I was struck looking at that original script of the play and starting looking through it ...”

A subsequent article on the city’s 350th anniversary re-acquainted him with Wilder, who popped up as one of the city’s noteworthy figures, and it stuck in his mind.

“I thought, we have such a beautiful play, and we have so many good actors at our disposal who could do a good job, and it could be so moving for our audience. ...”

The company agreed.

What’s really interesting about Wilder’s classic is that when it’s taken out of that high school setting and given a polish that only experienced actors can apply, it’s so layered and touching and challenging that one wonders how it came to be a staple of high school thespians.

New Haven Theater Company’s production also comes in time to pay homage to the 75th anniversary of the play’s first production in January 1938 at Princeton’s McCarver Theater.

“The play sometimes has a reputation as sappy and sentimental, but it’s actually not,” says Scarpa. “It’s funny, and you’re dealing with the biggest issues we deal with: How do we live our lives to the fullest, how do we choose to spend the time we have, and how present are we in our own lives, which is hard to do. ...”

The characters are “very, very recognizable people. In the end, everyone in the play is someone you know, or yourself. Everyone knows what it is to live or work or have victories or disappointments. All that is in ‘Our Town.’ It has everything about life,” Scarpa says.